What a house in Dubai costs: villa and townhouse prices by district, from our own stock

"A house in Dubai" covers two products with more than a twofold gap between them. Across our own stock — 1 884 villas and townhouses live as of early September 2026 — the medians run: townhouse AED 3.6m at a median of about 2 480 square feet, villa AED 8.1m at 4 950 feet. Entry to the segment starts at roughly AED 1.45m.

These are medians of actual listings, not market averages and not developer launch prices.

Townhouse or villa

Formally a townhouse sits in a terrace with shared side walls and a villa stands detached on its own plot. In practice the difference reads in three things: the plot (a narrow rear yard against land around the house), the neighbours (you hear one through the wall, or you do not — that is half the price gap), and the running cost of a garden that has to be irrigated in this climate. A semi-detached villa, with one shared wall rather than two and a full plot, generally prices between the two.

By bedroom count

The bulk of the market is four bedrooms: 711 of 1 884 listings, more than a third. That is the standard family format, and it carries the densest competition both when buying and when reselling.

Look at the last column. Price per foot barely moves from three bedrooms to seven. A house does not get more expensive because the foot costs more; it gets more expensive because there are more feet. The jump between four and five bedrooms is not a different class of housing — it is two thousand additional square feet.

By district

Medians spread fourfold, from AED 2.75m to 11.25m. Price per foot spreads less — 1 082 to 2 856 — which means expensive districts are expensive not only per foot but because the houses in them are larger.

The pattern is the obvious one and it is the main orientation point: the closer to the coast and to the established parts of the city, the dearer the foot. The Springs and Arabian Ranches are mature communities inside the city; The Valley, Damac Hills 2 and Dubai South are development on the outbound edge, where land is cheaper and the Marina is a drive away.

What is added to the price

• 6–8% on resale. Land Department transfer fee 4%, agent commission 2% plus VAT, fixed trustee fees, developer NOC.
• Service charge. For villas it is often calculated on plot rather than built area, so a large plot means a large annual bill. Ask for the figure in dirhams per year, not the rate per foot.
• Grounds. Irrigation, landscaping, pool maintenance — a line that does not exist for an apartment. In this climate a lawn without irrigation dies in a week.
• Utilities. A 4 000-foot house is not cooled like a 900-foot flat. The summer bill scales with area.

On the discounts in listings

Of 1 884 houses in our stock, 1 715 are listed with a discount to their original asking price. The median discount is 6%; the largest in the set is 39%.

Read that carefully. The discount is measured against a price the seller set, not against the market. A house listed 20% above comparable stock is still above the market after a 15% "discount". There is one way to test it: registered sales of houses of the same type, size and cluster over the last six to twelve months.

The short version

Entry to the house segment starts around AED 1.45m for a townhouse on the edge of the city. The median townhouse is AED 3.6m, the median villa AED 8.1m, and the most traded format on the market is four bedrooms at AED 5.3m. Beyond that, price is set by the combination of district and floor area, and two outwardly similar houses in different communities can differ fourfold.

These figures are a snapshot of our catalogue at the start of September 2026. The stock rebuilds nightly, and a quarter from now the medians will be different.